The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[SBell]

Nice additons to your collection Halichoeres, especially the overview of 2017. What's that weird green fish with the grey noooooose? I am not a great fan of raptors, but I also want to go for the forest pack, cause of the tree and base

It's a Pituraspis from Diramix

[Shonisaurus]

It would be interesting for toy dinosaur companies in general to focus a little more on adding to their mass productions vegetation and prehistoric invertebrates such as insects or spider arthropods.

Unfortunately they are untreated species in the toy market. And first of all Halichoeres Thanks for those magnificent pictures!

[Archinto]

Gosh everyones raptors are starting to show up already? Im still waiting for mine... 

Awesome pics, thefigures look reallygood up close.

[Halichoeres]

Gosh everyones raptors are starting to show up already? Im still waiting for mine... 

You are pretty far away. I'm only the next state over, but it still took a week from the ship date. Some European customers got theirs before I did!

Thanks for all the comments, guys. I'm glad people agree there should be more plants! Talking of which, Araucaria trees are/were huuuuuge. They can be up to 80 meters tall. At that height, these are about 1:300 scale, even though they're the tallest plant toys I have. But I think they work fine for a 1:50-1:100 scale display; plants are variable. If you want to use it for any larger scale than that, the growth habit would be unrealistically mature relative to the height.

@Lanthanotus: Here's a closer shot of the Pituriaspis:


It's not winning any beauty contests, but a fish this weird, man, I gotta have it.

[Halichoeres]

Some more beasts of the Mesozoic, but not the ones you're thinking of (those are on page 40):


Schleich Oviraptor
Scale: 1:12
Released: 2018
Schleich's first decent feathered dinosaur. The paint scheme is pretty lazy but the base sculpt isn't bad at all. This replaces the Carnegie Oviraptor, which I think is prettier but under-feathered.


Safari Malawisaurus
Scale: 1:40-1:45
Released: 2018, officially
Great new sauropod. I love the rotundity and I find the color scheme pleasing.


The head doesn't photograph well, but in hand I like it quite a lot. Maybe it would have shown up better on the darker background. At any rate, I'd like to see all the sauropods with good head material done this well before we get more taxa that are notable for being gigantic but whose head anatomy we have to guess at.


Science & Nature Serendipaceratops
Scale: 1:30
Serendipaceratops was named for a single ulna that the Vickers-Rich team thought looked like a ceratopsian--from Early Cretaceous Australia, which by then was separated from the northern continents where all other known ceratopsians are from. Australia's a place with a spotty enough Mesozoic record that a lineage could go undetected, but there are quite a few trackways from this time, none of which shows anything resembling a ceratopsian. Other researchers have shown that there's nothing very special about this ulna that differentiates it from other ornithischians, but Rich et al. doubled down in a 2003 morphospace paper which as far as I'm concerned proved nothing except that ceratopsians have a lot of morphological disparity related to the ulna, which you might expect in a clade that starts bipedal and produces a major quadrupedal branch. Maybe we'll never know what Serendipaceratops really looked like but it probably wasn't like this.

This would be a less speculative figure, but might attract ants:



Diramix Vulcanodon ("Vulcanox" from the Mega Dinosaurs series)
Scale: 1:40
Released: 2015
This hideous creatures is labeled as a Vulcanodon in the printed matter that accompanies it. It doesn't resemble a sauropod in any respect except that it's quadrupedal and has a long-ish neck. Known Vulcanodon remains are very fragmentary, including almost nothing of the neck, but still the neck is probably not nearly long enough. But sometimes I just can't help myself.


Schleich Tawa hallae
Scale: 1:13
Sculptor: Vlad Konstantinov
Released: 2018
Triassic toys are so thin on the ground that I find it hard to grouse when a major company troubles itself to make one. This figure isn't perfect, but it is recognizably a basal theropod and has mostly reasonable proportions. I'm pretty forgiving on oversized feet. The one thing I can kinda do without is the feather tufts.


Dawn of the Dinosaurs Promastodonsaurus bellmani (unknown maker)
Scale: 1:8
Released: 2010
This is the last of the Dawn of the Dinosaurs capsule figures I was looking for! Now all I'm missing from the line is the resin Saurosuchus (and of course there are a few capsule figures that never interested me). It's not quite the last temnospondyl on my wishlist, though--I'm still looking for a couple of Play Visions amphibians.


Roughly to scale with this Cynognathus, Procompsognathus, and Euparkeria. It was a much smaller animal than Mastodonsaurus!

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks for the infoa nd bigger shot of the Pituriaspis.

Man, that Promastodonssaurus is a nice little cutie.

[bmathison1972]

So glad you are posting more pics!

[PlesiosaurusNessy]

@Halichoeres: You have an outstanding collection of very rare dinosaurs and invertebrates, absolute W O W! I like your always
wonderful pictures and very admire your extraordinary knowledge of the prehistoric invertebrates, trilobites, fossils and plants!
Your articles in your thread are always very interesting to read and I like your collection of the different trilobites,but your newest
acquisitions are fantastic,too,all the Raptors on bases, the Diramix Vulcanodon and Serendipaceratops I´ve never heard before,he
looks super and remembers me on Protoceratops....and Promastodonsaurus is really very cute!
Happy further collecting of rare invertebrate and dinosaur species!

[Shonisaurus]

The cynognathus and the procompsognathus are also very good Halichoeres figures. I congratulate you. 

[sauroid]

if only Schleich's artist replaced the bony ridges around the Oviraptor's eyes with fleshy wattle-like texture...

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for the visits and the kind words, folks! I am very proud of that Promastodonsaurus; it's one of the rarest things I've spotted in a random toy lot. Everything else it came with was pure garbage, but it was worth it for that one tiny temnodspondyl.

if only Schleich's artist replaced the bony ridges around the Oviraptor's eyes with fleshy wattle-like texture...

I would have been happy with that or just more feathers.

[Georassic]

Thanks for the visits and the kind words, folks! I am very proud of that Promastodonsaurus; it's one of the rarest things I've spotted in a random toy lot. Everything else it came with was pure garbage, but it was worth it for that one tiny temnodspondyl.

I'll add my belated congrats on that finding that critter!
And, I can't believe how small it is, next to the Toob Euparkeria!!

[Sim]

I also got the Microraptor gui, although I'm not sure I'll keep it. I usually prefer static to action figures, so unless someone convinces me it's a significant improvement in terms of accuracy, I'll stick with the Safari and PNSO versions.

I currently don't have any of these figures, so it's hard for me to tell some proportions.  Going by what seems apparent to me from looking at photos of them:

Out of these three Microraptor figures, I think the one with the best feathering might be the Wild Safari one, with the Beasts of the Mesozoic one in second place.  If either of these have any inaccuracies in their feathering, I think they aren't very noticeable.  The PNSO version seems to have feathering that's a bit more inaccurate: Its rectrices appear to start too early on the tail giving it a tail fan that's too large.  Additionally, feathers on the end of its forelimb wings look too short and this also gives its wings a rounded appearance that contrasts with the pointed wing shape Microraptor is known to have.

What I've said so far in this post about the feathering has been without paying attention to iridescence.  Now considering iridescence, the Beasts of the Mesozoic one has it.  I guess the PNSO could count as having it, like you said earlier in this thread:

Nice little glossy dromaeosaurid. It does a pretty good job of mimicking iridescence with some well-placed highlights.

But the Wild Safari Microraptor seems devoid of iridescence or anything that could suggest it.  I've looked at a number of reviews of this figure, and its lack of iridescence seems to be the most often expressed downside.  They made its feathers matt too, they didn't even make them glossy.  It's disappointing, it feels like not enough care went into giving this figure good paint, after all the Wild Safari Archaeopteryx does have iridescence.   The lack of iridescence is why I've decided to not get the Wild Safari Microraptor.

I agree with you in usually preferring static to action figures.

[stargatedalek]

The Wild Safari Microraptor also lacks the alula which we see on the fossil.

[Sim]

I think the Wild Safari Microraptor does have the alula.  Its alula feathers appear to be resting on the primary coverts, which should be correct since its first finger isn't being moved outwards.

if only Schleich's artist replaced the bony ridges around the Oviraptor's eyes with fleshy wattle-like texture...

I would have been happy with that or just more feathers.

It seems to be very difficult for Schleich to make a nice-looking theropod, I can't think of any by them.  The grotesque detail on the unfeathered parts of the Schleich oviraptorid's head, neck and underside make it look hideous.  If those areas had been feathered, it would've been a very nice looking figure!

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for the visits and the kind words, folks! I am very proud of that Promastodonsaurus; it's one of the rarest things I've spotted in a random toy lot. Everything else it came with was pure garbage, but it was worth it for that one tiny temnodspondyl.

I'll add my belated congrats on that finding that critter!
And, I can't believe how small it is, next to the Toob Euparkeria!!

Thanks very much! Yeah, the DoD capsule figures are really tiny.

Thanks for the input, Sim and SGD. I also think the Safari Microraptor shows an alula. Here's a photo from suspsy's review:


I know how alulae look in modern birds but I'm not sure about stem-birds, so I might be wrong. But that looks pretty good to me. The PNSO, it's true, looks to have too much of the pollex free.

I personally find the wing shape and extent of feathering bigger deals than iridescence, so I'm still leaning toward keeping the Safari for now.

It seems to be very difficult for Schleich to make a nice-looking theropod, I can't think of any by them.  The grotesque detail on the unfeathered parts of the Schleich oviraptorid's head, neck and underside make it look hideous.  If those areas had been feathered, it would've been a very nice looking figure!

It definitely makes it look somewhat undead. It's like they get close to realizing how birdlike these things were and then say, "mm, nope, better give it a bony scowl so people know it's a dinosaur."

[Roselaar]

I never added Pituriaspis to the USL, can't remember a reason why. There's no other figures of that species around, right?

[Halichoeres]

I never added Pituriaspis to the USL, can't remember a reason why. There's no other figures of that species around, right?

I can't imagine why! If there were another version, I would probably have that instead. While you're adding it, don't forget the Poraspis from the same line:

[BlueKrono]

At first I confused it with Pteraspis... Spine-nosed extinct P-named fish!

[Roselaar]

Thanks, I better add them soon then. And I'll use your lovely pics.